Category: http://schemas.google.com/blogger/2008/kind#post

Father’s Day Cookies for a Golfer

Leave a comment

Father’s day is coming up – what does your dad like to do on his special day? One of my uncles likes to golf, so his wife and daughters asked me to make up some special golfing cookies for him.

I love the bright, limited color palette for these golf cookies. The intensity of the colors, however, made them bleed a bit. I hope the colors last until Sunday!

This little golf bag cookie has some personalization at the bottom and is stuffed with golf clubs of all shapes and sizes. The plaid pattern was a fun way to incorporate more colors into the cookie.

A little golf ball on a red tee with grass growing up all around it. 

 
I bet you never realized decorated sugar cookies could be so manly.

Fluffy white clouds in a blue sky – a perfect day for golfing!

A red flag marks the 18th hole. 

Makes a great cookie golf scene, doesn’t it. 

See the special Father’s Day cookie? It made 13 cookies total, a baker’s dozen.

Happy Father’s Day and don’t forget to do something nice with your dad this weekend to show him how much you love him! I’m working on a special dessert for mine, I’ll post pictures when it’s finished this Sunday!

More Macarons – Lemon, Strawberry, Chocolate, and Mint

Leave a comment

I went crazy with the macarons and made about 100 little sandwiches over the course of one weekend.

 3 flavors of shells: lemon, chocolate, and strawberry.

The lemon shell was made with fresh lemon zest (easy peasy) but the strawberry was a bit more complicated.

Strawberry. I made this flavor by slicing strawberries very thin and baking the berries in the oven at a low temperature for a few hours to dehydrate them. When they were dry, I put them in the blender to turn them into intensely flavored strawberry powder and mixed that in with the macaroni batter.

3 kinds of fillings: swiss meringue butter cream, strawberry cheesecake, and chocolate mint.

The strawberry cheesecake was made using my favorite cream cheese frosting recipe and adding fresh strawberry puree.

The chocolate mint is a mint infused chocolate ganache. I soaked fresh mint leaves in simmering milk before making the ganache and combined with the dark chocolate it was the perfect hint of flavor.

These french macarons were gobbled up in no time.

They have a fabulous crunch on the outside but are soft and almost cake-like on the inside. 

 After 100 of these, I think I’m done with macarons for at least the next week.

Coffee Cake, Maddie Style

Leave a comment

I made coffee cake. This coffee cake, to be precise.

It was for a picnic and I wanted them to be bite sized, easy to clean up, and even easier to eat.

So of course, I made coffee cake in mini cupcake pans.

The cake was incredibly tender and moist.

But you know the topping is always everyone’s favorite part. Cinnamon, brown sugar, toasted walnuts, and mini chocolate chips.

Use your favorite coffee cake recipe and they’re perfect for brunch or your own picnic!

Pink Ombre Mothers Day Spinkle Cake

Pink Ombre Mothers Day Sprinkle Cake

8 Comments

I love this cake.

Let’s say it again: I LOVE this cake. This cake was inspired by this fabulous cake.  My mother saw it online and asked for the same cake, but in pink!

The outside of this tall cake is absolutely covered in rainbow sprinkles. I took all the nonpareils in the sprinkle drawer and mixed them together to make a huge bowl of rainbow sprinkles.
And the inside is even more special! Six layers of pink ombre fade, each a bit more pink than the last.

Creamy white frosting inside.

Pink cake and sprinkles, what more could you ask for? I served this cake with fresh juicy strawberries. I soaked the berries in juice and sugar, then dumped them on top of everyone’s slices. It was the perfect finish!

Just be careful when adding the sprinkles…it’s a little hard to get them to stick to the sides and there were sprinkles bouncing all over my kitchen floor as I was throwing them at the cake trying to get them to stick.
This cake was made for Mother’s Day, but it would be fabulous as a birthday cake or as a graduation cake if done in school colors.

Or any type of celebration cake, really. It’s quite festive and I think I’m going to be using this decorating technique quite a bit.

Maybe I should buy some more sprinkles.

Peanut Butter Tarts

1 Comment
I made a cheesecake. Almond crust underneath lemon cheesecake, vanilla bean cheesecake, strawberry cheesecake all swirled together.  It was absolutely delicious, but it got sliced and eaten and smashed and digested before my camera got anywhere near it, so I don’t have any pretty pictures to share.
Instead, here are some peanut butter tarts. I’m not exactly sure what was in each one because I just started plopping different fillings to crusts rather haphazardly, but I do know that there was a ton of chocolate and peanut butter happening. 

Chocolate peanut butter ganache. 

Peanut butter cheesecake swirl. 

Crunchy and sweet peanut butter filling.

Dark chocolate ganache. 

And a yummy shortbread crust. The crusts, by the way, were baked in a toaster oven. Because I’m a college student and that’s just what we do.

Peanut Butter Chocolate Candy Cake

Leave a comment
I swear, I really was planning on taking pictures of the inside of this cake. During the party I cut a nice slice and put it aside, promising myself that I’d take more pictures in the morning. Then my suitemates and I ate it. I’d apologize to you, but it was so tasty that I really don’t feel all that badly about it.

The cake had 3 layers: chocolate, peanut butter, and chocolate peanut butter swirl.

Layered with chocolate peanut butter ganache (just add some peanut butter and extra cream to your favorite ganache recipe) and chocolate peanut butter cream cheese frosting.

As you can see, it’s decorated in kit-kat bars, Hershey’s kisses, and colorful m&m’s.

And tied off with a ribbon, because you know I can’t resist.

This lovely cake was made for a candy-loving friend’s birthday.

The decoration was incredibly fast and easy – took only about 20 minutes total!

This cake was incredibly rich – perfect with a glass of milk around a table with friends.

Lemon Roes Icing, beautiful decorations. DIY

I’m bored. Let’s make lemon cake!

Leave a comment
Once upon a time there was a girl named Maddie who didn’t want to study on a Sunday afternoon. And that’s how this pretty pink lemon cake happened. I’m proud to say that this cake is included in an article about me in my school’s newspaper.

Top layer: lemon blueberry. Middle layer: lemon lemon. Bottom layer: lemon strawberry.

Each layer is filled with this incredible vanilla frosting and super tart lemon curd.

It’s all decorated in pretty swirls of this cream cheese frosting.  That recipe isn’t actually for a frosting – it’s really a no-bake cheesecake – but it’s delicious, so I’m not complaining.

Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to sit here and pretend that I didn’t eat this cake for breakfast every day for a week.

im+bored+lets+make+lemon+cake

DIY cupcake baked alaska tutorial with chocolate, ice cream, and meringue

Baked Alaska Cupcakes

Leave a comment
When tasked with coming up with something delicious for a dinner party, I decided to make baked Alaska. I wasn’t sure exactly what it was, but I was pretty sure it had something to do with meringue and ice cream, so that sounded good enough for me. I did some homework and decided to make the tasty treat in miniature.
Pretty little chocolate cupcakes hollowed out
Add in a scoop of strawberry ice cream (homemade, of course)

Pipe on the meringue and go crazy with the blowtorch.

They were absolutely delicious and everyone loved them.
Although, in retrospect, serving them frozen solid right out of the freezer probably wasn’t the best idea.

I suppose I’ll just have to make them again.

Mini chocolate cupcakes with mint hershey kisses baked into each one

Mini Mint Cupcakes

Leave a comment
At the supermarket around the holidays, this bag of Mint Truffle Hershey’s Kisses just jumped into my cart. When I got home, I decided to make cupcakes with them to keep myself from eating them all.

I made a regular chocolate cake recipe and filled mini cupcake lines with the batter.

The kisses were plopped on top and pressed ever so slightly.

And I just baked them normally. The cupcake puffed up around them beautifully.

Using a regular (and delicious) chocolate buttercream, I piped spikes on top and asked my sister to toss a few green jimmies and some white nonpareils on to make them even cuter.

Don’t you love the carriers?

Each box was only about a dollar (and they’re reusable!) and it did an excellent job protecting the cupcakes while I was on route to the delivery site. In fact, these pictures were taken after a bumpy car ride and even the peaks still look beautiful.